The Flu Shot Complication
by EstellaB
Summary: Over the years, there are several addenda added to the Relationship Agreement. Sometimes they even have to start over. Shamy.


The Flu Shot Complication

_Over the years, there are several addenda added to the Relationship Agreement. Sometimes, they even have to start over. Shamy oneshots, loosely connected._

_Disclaimer: The only profit I make from this is fun, and possibly the opportunity to torment Sheldon a little (but only because I love him). _

* * *

><p>It begins with a flu shot.<p>

The cafeteria girl who hands him his pudding on Tuesday has pronounced coryzal symptoms and the beginnings of a lower respiratory tract infection, and Sheldon realises, instantly, that influenza season has commenced early this year. His panic is quickly circumvented: it hardly takes a minute to place the call and set an appointment at his regular clinic. It occurs to him that it would be prudent to contact Amy Farrah Fowler. There is every possibility that this year will see infection rates equivalent to those seen in the 1918 epidemic, and it is of paramount importance that she is protected.

He does not like the idea of her becoming ill.

It is Amy who points out that, as per the Relationship Agreement, it is her obligation as the Girlfriend to accompany the Boyfriend and provide moral support in the form of handholding. She is altogether too smug, but Sheldon has an avowed dislike of shots. He fights a quiet battle within himself, and loses; Amy meets him in the waiting room. Sheldon looks around at the hordes of unwashed, raucous, spluttering toddlers spilled cheerfully out all over the floor, and shudders. He edges slightly closer to Amy Farrah Fowler. At least he knows her hands are clean.

(He still makes her apply alcohol gel when they enter the treatment room).

The nurse greets him with a particular expression on her face; perhaps it is terror, perhaps digestive discomfort. (Sheldon does not know that there is a list with his name and picture on stuck up in the staff room. He does not know that the nurse is the youngest member of staff, facing her 'Treating Dr Cooper' rite of passage).

Potential gastrointestinal problems aside, the nurse is calm and efficient. He sits on the treatment bed and looks out of the window as she prepares the injection. Silently, he revisits the chemical structure of the inoculation, and considers the way in which it will interact with his immune system: he is likely to suffer slight pyrexia in the evening, but should recover sufficiently that it will not interfere with his natural sleep pattern. (He does not want to think about the needle, and Sheldon Cooper is nothing if not determined). To his surprise, it does not bother him overly when Amy Farrah Fowler climbs onto the treatment bed next to him to fulfil her Relationship Agreement obligations. Her fingers are a little rough from wearing latex gloves all day, and dry from the alcohol gel, and she twists them in between his own.

For a few moments, they sit there like that, looking out of the window. Sheldon stops thinking about the preparation with which he is about to be injected, and instead lists the bones of Amy's hand and wrist, beginning with the scaphoid and working his way round clockwise, through the carpals, metacarpals and phalanges, all the way to the lunate. He knows it is impossible, but it seems that he can feel each one through her skin, resting as close as it is to his own. She is prepared as the needle goes in, and gives his hand an additional comforting squeeze at the crucial moment.

It is not at all unpleasant.

Instantly, Sheldon reprimands himself for imprecise thinking. The comforting squeeze was not unpleasant. The needle was exactly as unpleasant as had been expected.

Amy releases his hand and slides off the treatment bed, and he is taken aback by the suddenness with which she is absent. Nonetheless, he stands, and listens as she exchanges social niceties with the nurse. He smiles at the woman as well, and cannot fathom the expression on her face. (She is remembering all the horror stories she has been told, and guessing that perhaps she has been the victim of a classic practical joke, because Dr Cooper seems perfectly harmless, really).

Sheldon's arm begins to ache as they leave the clinic, but it is a curiously satisfactory ache (it is the ache of knowing that he will not catch influenza this year). Briefly, he considers pleading his arm, and asking Amy Farrah Fowler to provide moral support once more. The thought confuses him: he had made provisions for handholding in their Relationship Agreement as a concession to her, not himself.

He fights the urge all the way to her apartment (it is three blocks from the clinic), but it is Anything Can Happen Thursday and she invites him in for Indian food. He finds it simultaneously difficult to get the words out and impossible to keep them in:

"My arm still hurts and I require assistance."

He extends a hand.

It is impossible, even for him, to mistake the expression on Amy's face. It is delight. She takes his proffered hand with haste, and, as they climb the steps to her apartment, he despises himself for his weakness, and yet he is as delighted as she is, and he doesn't understand at all.

"This changes _nothing_," he says, almost snaps. Is this feeling the feeling that Leonard and Wolowitz routinely humiliate themselves in order to discover? Is it this which terrifies Koothrappali to the point of mutism? Perhaps for the first time he understands, just a little, what is going on in those lesser minds. (He does not accept that he is subject to it himself, however; this will be transient, and he will soon reach equilibrium again).

* * *

><p>Four days later, Sheldon receives a text message containing the time and date of Amy Farrah Fowler's flu shot appointment. He despises himself for the sudden surge of expectation (her implication is clear, and he remembers how troublingly addictive the contact was last time). It is in the contract, though, and he has to oblige; moreover, he reads something of a challenge in the few short sentences. How is he to demonstrate to her that he is above all this if he chooses not to face it?<p>

He steels himself for battle.

* * *

><p>Sheldon Lee Cooper (BS, MS, MA, PhD, ScD) does not admit defeat.<p>

Occasionally, however, he may choose to re-evaluate based upon new evidence.

Three days have elapsed since Amy Farrah Fowler's flu shot, and he can still feel the absence of her hand around his, far more intrusive and distracting than the initial contact had been. Were he to be of a sentimental bent, he could describe his hand as _smarting _from where she had held it and then dropped it. He is not of a sentimental bent, but that does not prevent the thought from crossing his mind, however briefly. Carefully, he considers the facts.

1) Amy Farrah Fowler is his girlfriend, and, as per his contract with her, they have recently held hands during two flu shots.

2) He has been unable to overcome his instincts, and, despite the humiliation thereof, prolonged the experience.

3) Both times.

4) The absence of Amy Farrah Fowler's hand in his is proving an obstacle; he is supposed to be writing the abstract for his latest paper, but instead his brilliant mind is being diverted along this highly arbitrary path (wasted), simply because he knows there will be no flu shots for another year.

_**Hypothesis**: holding Amy Farrah Fowler's hand on a regular basis will prove less distracting than _not_ holding Amy Farrah Fowler's hand._

Although this hypothesis is drawn altogether too much from the spurious field of psychology, he feels that it is elevated to a new level of importance by its subject matter; it does, after all, centre upon his _own_ mind, the brightest in a generation. Perhaps it is worthy of testing. Anything to increase the efficiency of _Homo novus' _neural processing. The investigation, in fact, is necessary in order to benefit of mankind.

It takes him fourteen attempts to draft the addendum. He finds that he is as happy as Amy is when she reads it, signs it, and instantly grabs his hand. He weaves his fingers in amidst hers, and mentally recites bones backwards from the lunate, and completely forgets that this is supposed to be helping him work.

**If you choose to leave a review, I would particularly appreciate feedback on the last section, as I'm not too sure about it. Thanks :-)**


End file.
